Fests and Festivals: Summer in Erfurt

I think I probably start every single post mentioning something about time flying, and I'll say it again, time really is flying! This time next month I'll be on a train out of Erfurt, sad times. My exams start next week (haven't even started to think about revising for them!) and so this may be the last post for some time. However, as usual, I have plenty to say!

A couple of weekends ago we decided that we'd make good use of our Thuringia rail cards and visit a couple of random towns. So we plucked the towns of Rudolstadt and Saalfeld out of the air. We had a surprisingly enjoyable day. Rudolstadt was a typical German town, where the main sightseeing spots are the town square, the Rathaus and the castle/residence. We spent the morning pottering about there and had a picnic in the gardens of the residence, which was really nice, it was a surprisingly sunny day, a real rarity here at the moment. We then wandered back to the train station to board the train to Saalfeld. On our way we crossed some sort of fete/parade, ran by the German fire department so that was great, so many young German firemen!!!

In Saalfeld we'd heard that there were some "fairy grottos", so we walked out of the town and up a steep hill to the grotto park. Here we paid an extortionate amount to go on a guided tour of the grottos. We had to put on some brown anoraks over our clothes and rucksacks which was really funny, as we looked as though we had hunchbacks. Then we were led down into the caves by our amusing guide, who genuinely seemed to believe that fairies still lived there! The tour itself was pretty dull, but the grottos were quite remarkable, pools of water with stalagmites and stalactites, beautifully lit and really colourful (I think it's the Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the most colourful caves or something).

That evening, I went to a party at a German friend of mine's house. I only really vaguely know her, I happen to sit by her in my grammar class and she did Erasmus in Belgium last semester, so knows what it's like and is really friendly towards us. She invited me along to her party, and although I didn't know anyone there, I went along in order to live up to my year abroad motto "don't turn down any invitations". Anyway, as usual, I'm glad I went, it was good fun, and provided a story for this blog! So I was chatting to a guy and a girl and he went off to collect some drinks and when he came back I said "Prost" (German for "cheers") and he said, "wait, wait, I know this in English...ummm, oh yeah...Miss Sophie!" I was utterly bewildered by this, not sure if he thought "Miss Sophie" was my name, or if I'd misheard him or I didn't know what! So I asked him and he was totally adamant that "Miss Sophie" is English for cheers. I asked him where he got this from and then the two of them proceeded to explain to me that there's a British comedy sketch called "Dinner for One" that absolutely all Germans watch on New Year's Eve. I've asked lots of Germans since and they really do all know about it and find it hilarious. They watch it in English and apparently love it. It's well worth youtubing, it's actually pretty funny!

That week was some week of demonstrations here, the students are protesting about various things, such as the overcrowding of the university. A group of students camped in the middle of campus all week (unluckily for them, it rained constantly!) and there was a big demo in the city centre. The camp was pretty impressive with banners up everywhere and a fair few people taking part (god excuse to take a week off lectures!), but I have to say, German protests aren't a patch on French ones.

We've been out to a fair few parties recently, one memorable one would be when our Mexican friend convinced us to go to salsa with him, which was pretty funny. Despite Iliana and the others in France trying on numerous occasions to teach me I am still as hopeless as ever! Coupled with my eastern European friends who've also never done anything of the like we must have looked quite a picture!

Thinking about my friends, I had a really funny lesson with Orsi the other day. In one of my German as a Foreign Language courses we had to present our favourite book to the class. Orsi did a really good presentation, we were all enthralled by her book and really keen to read it. She of course ended her presentation by recommending it to us all and someone asked what the title would be in German, to which she replies "oh no, it's only available in Hungarian!" No-one speaks Hungarian, we were utterly disappointed! Maybe it's time we learnt!

I had a really blonde moment the other day (hmmm maybe I should call it a Henna moment, my hair still has an orange tinge!) when doing my French grammar work book. I was working through it at a decent pace when I turned over to a page whose title was "correct" with lists of sentences underneath. I immediately assumed that there was an error in each sentence and we had to spot it. I spent literally a good hour trying in vain to do it, utterly confused why I was unable to find anything wrong. In the end I left it and sent a message to my tutor to arrange to discuss it with her. The next day I opened the book again to try again, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was not supposed to be correcting the sentences...they were in fact the correct answers for all the other exercises that I'd already done! What a ninny! And what a waste of time!

Thinking about grammar, I had a funny German grammar class the other week. In this class there are the top Erasmus students and a load of Germans who want to become German teachers and so need to learn the rules of grammar. Strange idea, but it kind of works. At the end of the lesson we always play a game and this week it was a variety of the game Pairs. I was working together with a German guy and we proceeded to take all the slips of paper out of the envelope and put them face down on the table. I was putting them down completely at random, while he was lining them up in straight rows. I was utterly bemused by this, half the fun of pairs is not being able to remember where the pieces are, but he said there was no way a German could play pairs without straight lines! Ha, German organisation!

Things are hotting up here, work wise. The end of term is drawing near, far too quickly for my liking! Last week I had to give a major German presentation for my Fremdwoerter course. Rosie (the other girl from York) and I had to give a presentation to last the entire lesson, all one and a half hours of it, in German, eeeeek! The presentation actually probably couldn't have gone better, so we're really pleased, I have finally reached a decent level of German! What is funny is that the topic of the presentation was "Metasprachdiskurse" and we had to read a text on it, then summarize and develop the argumentations. Remarkably, we managed to give the entire presentation without knowing what Metasprachdiskurse actually is! Now that is success!

The weekend before last was Erfurt's second biggest festival, after the Christmas Market (which, incidentally, is apparently Germany's 3rd best market, I will definitely have to come back next year!). The festival is a huge music festival, called the Kraemerbrueckefest, after the famous old bridge that's in the town centre. I simply cannot describe the sheer scale of the festival. It stretches right through the town centre, over the bridge, round the bridge, across numerous squares and up dozens of streets. On every corner there was a food stand, someone performing and throngs of people. I don't know how many people visited Erfurt that weekend, but it felt like half of Germany had come along!

On the Friday night we watched the opening ceremony with a funny play and then headed to the cathedral square where we watched numerous acts, all really good. There was such a vibrant atmosphere there and fortunately the dicey weather held out! On Saturday, I spend the early afternoon with Nadine and some others and we wandered from square to square, sampling German cuisine (sausages of course!) and enjoying the music. There was a market beside the river and that was probably my favourite part, the theme was the middle ages so there was old cooking, costumes, music, the full works.

Then in the late afternoon I left that group and my tandem partner Linda and I went to watch a hockey match, which was great, I haven't watched hockey since Roses last year and I haven't played since Easter, it really made me want to pick up a stick. What was peculiar is that the match took place on the roof of a supermarket! What an odd idea! But somehow it worked and when you think about it, it's a really good use of space inside a packed city.

After the match we wandered back into town and met up with the others. Together we had a really good evening, watching many more live music performances and then we headed back to the main square to watch the closing ceremony. This consisted of simply the best firework display that I have ever seen, with the cathedral and Petersburg in the background and great music to accompany it. Ahhh Erasmus life doesn't get much better!

The next morning I was up like a lark as I had a trip planned with my friendly professor and wife. We met in Weimar and then headed down towards Apolda (I never thought that I would return there!) and out to a village, whose name I can't recall. We went on a really beautiful walk, along a river and then up the mountain side above it and then to a traditional restaurant in an old castle for lunch. We then headed down off of the mountain and up another, to a cafe for coffee and cake, mmmm, we'd really earnt that! After a walk, we drove in the car to something really strange, that I really didn't understand. It was a sort of wall, really tall, maybe 10 meters and fairly long, probably 40 or 50 meters, made of twigs. There was water seemingly trickling through the twigs and apparently this makes the air around extremely healthy and good for people with asthma. Well I didn't feel affected by it, but maybe that's just because I don't have asthma!

This weekend just gone I spent with Linda at her home in Wiesbaden, not far from Frankfurt. We headed down on the Friday and arrived mid afternoon to be welcomed by her parents and taken back to their apartment. Their apartment is typically German, I'd forgotten just how differently Germans live. For starters, far more Germans live in apartments, I cann't think of hardly anyone in Britain that I know that lives in a flat, even students in Britain tend to live in a proper house with garden and all. Secondly, (and bearing in mind that I have only visited about 5 German apartments, so this could well be a major generalisation) they are all really modern, above all this effect is probably due to the severe lack of carpets, they're missing out!! Thinking about modernities, we had a funny conversation about dishwashers: Linda's Mum commented how backward they are in Slovakia where the women must always wash up and they don't have dishwashers. At first I misunderstood, and thought they were talking about washing machines, but then I realised and had to confess that we don't have one at home in Britain either, apparently this is unheard of in Germany.

That afternoon we went to Mainz (I think!) and had a quick stroll along the Rhine (again...I think!!!) before having a drink in the sun in the cafe where Linda's brother works. We then headed back at that evening we went to an outdoor theatre on top of a hill looking over the city. The "play" was completely improvised and pretty funny, although I couldn't understand everything, I could follow quite easily and learnt a fair few useful (or not!) bits of vocab! Afterwards we took a water powered cable car down into the town which was quite unique and gave us nice views of the town at night.

The next day Linda and I took the train into Frankfurt. On route between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt is the Opel factory (the one that's currently in the news a lot), apparently without it the area would be completely dead as everyone works there. As we travelled along the tracks we could see the road and more than every second car was an Opel, must be pretty hard to find your car if you park up in a car park in town!

Frankfurt was really pretty cool, more like Beijing than Erfurt, towering skyscrapers dominating the skyline and really bustling shopping streets. We pottered around, enjoyed a hot dog on the banks of the Main, strolled through a flea market, walked under the shadows of the skyscrapers and nipped into a seriously modern shopping centre. I can't actually describe how modern it was, it really was an architectural masterpiece, I have photos! I was really surprised to see both Accessorize and New Look inside, I'd previously thought that they were completely unknown on the continent, but evidently not.

That evening we went out into Wiesbaden a bit and as it was getting late Linda gave me the choice, either we go to a converted abattoir, which is now a night club, or go home and get up early to go to watch a football match. Sport fan as I am, I opted for the latter and did not regret it! So, on the Sunday morning we went with Linda's dad and brother to watch the final of the German under 18s, the winners being the best team in Germany. The match was between Mainz (where we were) and Dortmund and was great fun. 11000 German football fans, certainly not a bad atmosphere! We won 2-1 so there was plenty of chanting, cheering and general banter, a really enjoyable morning.

We headed home, where Linda's Mum had been cooking lunch all morning. In fact we probably ate more Italian food that German (all very tasty!), but a couple of notable things spring to mind. Firstly, German breakfasts are very meaty! It's probably a bit rich coming from an English girl considering our traditional breakfast, but I did find hams and cheeses very strange for breakfast, although I could easily adapt! Secondly, in Britain when I am a guest I would always always wait to be offered something to eat and not serve myself, where as it appears in Germany they don't have this custom, so that's something I've learnt, although it's definitely an intuition it's hard to change.

So all in all it was a great weekend, it felt like a proper holiday to be away from Erfurt and uni life, not least because the climate down there was much better! It's a bit of a thud coming back to lectures and work, but fortunately there are many parties to be looking forward to, in July alone there's American Independence Day and French Bastille Day for us Erasmus students to celebrate, as only we can!

Well, that's all that I've been up to recently, I will leave you with a few random observations and anecdotes that might interest you.

Firstly, I have come to realise, that although if you go out here in Germany, Germans, above all girls, do not dress up like we do in Britain, for example, trainers are completely acceptable (and normal) on a night out. However, I also think that there is a large contingent of German girls who really really do care about their appearance. There are a couple in one of my German classes, both of whom have bleach-blonde hair and serious fake tan. Last week they had one of the funniest conversations that I've heard in a long time about how to get a great fake tan. One of them came to conclude that in order to get the best all over natural looking tan it's advised to drink 2 litres of carrot juice every day! She said she swears by it! I'm pretty sure that could lead to an illness of some sort or other!

I've mentioned before that Germans generally seem to be environmentally friendly but I don't think I've mentioned the deposit system on bottles before. Whenever you buy any liquid in a supermarket or a drink in a bar, you have to pay extra for the glass or bottle, which you then get back when you take it back, this system is called Pfand (German for deposit). Of course in a bar you do so as soon as you want another drink or leave, but with supermarket bottles of course you don't do so. I had therefore been very lazy/forgetful as regards taking mine back, but was collecting them diligently all the same. Last week I finally got round to taking literally bags full back to the supermarket and was rewarded with a nice sum of money, it feels rather like a present, rather than extra money that you have in fact paid the supermarket. With the said additional money it feels like you should be spending it on luxuries, so I bought us what we now know as Pfand Punch, a delicious collection of "free" drinks, which we enjoyed this week at our campus festival. Am hoping to collect lots more bottles before the end of term so we can have a big Pfand night!

The campus fest mentioned above was an all day music festival on our campus, a bit like the last official party before the exams start. I'm really getting into German music, there's a surprisingly good amount of decent stuff around. What is amusing is that I often mishear lyrics completely and when I ask Linda who sings a certain song she is totally confuddled when I attempt to sing one of these songs to her after hearing it somewhere! Maybe I have a little more respect for those French karaoke singers now! Linda has pointed out that I need a really musical tandem partner next time who can decipher my singing!

Linda has also recently made me aware of something that I was totally unaware of...you can actually buy fresh milk in Germany! After 6 months of living in La Roche where it was impossible to buy anything other than UHT, when I arrived in Germany and went to the supermarket I immediately spotted the crates of UHT (which there are loads of) and assumed Germany was the same. However after whining about this to Linda she told me I was wrong and it is in fact available in Germany, I can't believe that I lived so long without it, but oh my, what joys to have fresh milk again!

Although my German is far from as good as my French, or anything like as good as it should be, it has come on a lot. Probably one of the reasons that it hasn't improved as much as my French did is that I spend most of the time with Erasmus friends, whose German is little or no better than my own. This has interesting consequences, such as that I've picked up a hilarious accent and quirky phrases, that aren't really German at all, but we Erasmus students have developed ourselves. Another observation is that I've become remarkably good at reading body language, I'm just so used to being in a situation where either Germans are speaking really fast or 2 foreign friends are speaking their language together and I simply do not understand, yet can follow feelings and the gist with relative ease.

Final comment for tonight is how being abroad has made me realise how much I love Britain, it's funny ways and the English language. I've become surprisingly defensive of all things British and far more aware of cultural differences. A recent anecdote, probably not the best, but one that springs to mind, about how funny the English language is, is when I spoke to a friend who speaks excellent English and I said "I'll give you a bell", of course meaning that I'll phone her, but she was both flummoxed and entertained by this, although to me it was just completely and utterly normal. Thinking about it, the image in your mind of actually giving someone a bell is quite funny...!